Monday, June 02, 2025

‘Are You Alawite?’: A Call To Prevent Genocide In Syria – Analysis


Alawites celebrating a festival in Banyas, Syria during World War II. Photo Credit: Frank Hurley, Wikimedia Commons


By Daniel Pipes


No one knows how many unarmed Alawites were killed in Syria between March 6 and 10, 2025, but Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma estimates more than three thousand. While Alawites constitute but a small religious community, perhaps 10 percent of Syria’s 15 million resident population, they suffer from a position of unique prominence and vulnerability.

In brief, throughout the centuries, the Alawites stood out as Syria’s most isolated, impoverished, despised, and oppressed ethnicity. Only when generals from their community seized power in Damascus in 1966 did the power balance change in their favor. But the Alawites’ ruthless domination of Syria for the next 58 years caused the country’s majority Sunni Muslim population to rebel, leading to a full-scale civil war that began in 2011 and ended in December 2024, when Sunnis overthrew Alawite rule and returned to power. Recent events point to an ominous Sunni desire for retribution.

Alawites Oppressed, Pre–1920 

As is well known, Islam claims to be the final religion. Accordingly, it abominates any subsequent faith originating from within it, calling its adherents apostates and deeming them fit to be sold into slavery or executed. (Because Judaism and Christianity predate Islam, their followers are tolerated but assigned an inferior status.) Sunnis and Shiites alike historically reviled Alawism, a distinct new religion that emerged from Shiite Islam in the ninth century AD. They looked upon Alawites (also known as Alawis, Nusayris, or Ansaris) as apostates and subjected them to harsh discrimination.

Thus, the prominent theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) wrote that Alawites “apostatize in matters of blood, money, marriage, and butchering, so it is a duty to kill them.” Ahmad ibn Taymiya (1268-1328), a major continuing influence on Islamists, called Alawites “more infidel than Jews or Christians, even more infidel than many polytheists” and deemed them to “have done greater harm to the community of Muhammad than have the warring infidels.” Therefore, he concluded, “war and punishment in accordance with Islamic law against them are among the greatest of pious deeds and the most important obligations” for a Muslim.

Such views persisted into modern times. Sunnis called them monkeys. The Ottoman Empire required them to pay extra taxes. A nineteenth-century Sunni shaykh, Ibrahim al-Maghribi, decreed that Muslims could freely take Alawite property and lives. A British traveler, Frederick Walpole, recorded being told, “these Ansayrii, it is better to kill one than to pray a whole day.”


Frequently persecuted and sometimes massacred in the modern era, Alawites insulated themselves geographically from the outside world by remaining within their highland in the northwest of Syria—between Lebanon and Turkey—in what are now the provinces of Latakia and Tartous. In the late 1920s, less than half of one percent of Alawites lived in towns. This isolation had terrible implications. A leading Alawite shaykh described his people “among the poorest of the East.” French geographer Jacques Weulersse observed that they lived out “their solitary existence in secrecy and repression.” Samuel Lyde, an Anglican missionary, found the state of their society “a perfect hell upon earth.”

The Alawite Rise to Power, 1920–1970

The Alawites’ half-century rise from oppression to domination began with their initial resistance to the French incursion, but they later helped the occupation of Syria (1920 to 1946) by supplying intelligence and providing a disproportionate number of recruits to the military and the police. In turn, French rule benefited the Alawites with autonomy and other privileges. After Syria gained independence from France in 1946, Alawites initially resisted central government control, but by 1954, had reconciled themselves to Syrian citizenship. Taking advantage of their continued overrepresentation in the army, they began their political ascent.

Ironically, the discrimination that had kept the Alawites in the lower social ranks served them well through the multiple military coups d’état that wracked Syria between 1949 and 1963. Ruinous power struggles among senior Sunni officers accompanied the regime changes, severely depleting Sunni ranks. Standing apart from these conflicts, non-Sunnis, and particularly Alawites, benefited by inheriting the Sunnis’ positions. Further, while Sunnis entered the military as individuals, Alawites did so as members of clans, with officers bringing kinsmen into their ranks.

Alawites also acquired power through the Baath Party, founded in 1940, which they joined in disproportionately large numbers: in part because one of its three founders was an Alawite and in part because two of its central doctrines, socialism and secularism, widely appealed to them. Socialism offered economic opportunities to the country’s poorest community, while secularism—the withdrawal of faith from public life—promised relief from religious prejudice.

Alawites had played a major role in the Baath coup of 1963, taking many key positions and purging Sunni competitors. These developments culminated in 1966, when a group of mainly Alawite Baathist military officers seized power. Once in office, they further purged non-Alawite officers. In the final drama, two Alawite generals, Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad, battled for supremacy, a rivalry that ended when Assad prevailed in 1970 and became the country’s president in 1971. This—Syria’s tenth military coup d’état in seventeen years—ended the era of instability and culminated the Alawites’ rise to power.

Alawite Rule and Sunni Shock

Confessional affiliation remained vitally important during the 58 years of Alawite rule, mostly under Hafez al-Assad (1970-2000) and his son Bashar (2000-2024). Hafez built a brutal police state and imposed Alawite control by placing his co-religionists in the armed forces, the party, the government, the civil bureaucracy, and, above all, the intelligence services: “Alawites so prevailed as undercover agents that people feared naming the sect in public,” reported the New York Times in 2011. “The preferred euphemism was ‘the Germans’.” Over time, Assad narrowed the range of his key allies, surrounding himself not just with coreligionists but with fellow tribesmen and members of his own family.

Sunnis made up about 70 percent of Syria’s population until the outbreak of civil war in 2011 (which led to their mass emigration). Beyond their numbers, they had historically ruled the region, leading to the tacit assumption that they should enjoy the perquisites of power. Like Episcopalians in the United States, they saw themselves as non-ethnics in a heterogeneous society. Before 1914, Sunnis held nine-tenths of administrative posts, maintained their predominance during the French mandate, and inherited control of the government upon independence. After 1970, however, they were mostly relegated to window-dressing. In the pithy words of an army veteran, “An Alawite captain has more say than a Sunni general.”

The psychological impact of this reversal on Sunnis can hardly be exaggerated. To them, an Alawite ruling in Damascus compares to an Untouchable becoming maharaja or a Jew becoming tsar—an unprecedented and shocking development. Michael Van Dusen of the Wilson Center rightly calls this shift in power “the most significant political fact of twentieth-century Syrian history and politics.”

Alawite Rule and Sunni Opposition, 1966–2024

Sunni Muslims overwhelmingly perceived Assad’s totalitarian repression in sectarian terms. The assertion of Alawite power in 1966 provoked the Sunnis’ religious anxieties, as reflected in their outraged response to a 1967 article that condemned Islam as “a mummy in the museum of history.” The reaction included large protests, the arrest of Sunni religious leaders, wide-scale strikes, and considerable violence. In 1979, the opposition came near to overthrowing the regime with the massacre of some 60 cadets—almost all Alawites—at a military school, followed by the near-assassination of Assad himself in 1980. 

Just when it appeared that the regime might fall, Assad responded with devastating effectiveness. Efforts to destroy the Muslim Brotherhood peaked in early 1982, when Syrian troops assaulted the city of Hama, attacking Muslim Brotherhood strongholds with field artillery, tanks, helicopters, and 12,000 troops (almost all Alawite). The soldiers indiscriminately killed as many as 30,000 Sunnis, ending serious challenges to the regime for nearly three decades.

Sunni opposition during those decades did not disappear but became more careful and patient. Indeed, Sunnis’ grievances festered as they endured domination by a people they considered inferior; as they perceived discrimination in aspects of daily life (such as Sunni households paying four times more than Alawites for electricity); as they lived with the memory of Hama and other massacres; as they resented the socialism that reduced their wealth, the military powerbrokers who destroyed their patronage system, the authoritarian rule that effaced political expression, the supposed indignities against Islam, and the regime’s alleged cooperation with Maronites and Israelis.

The Assad family. Hafez al-Assad and his wife, Mrs Anisa Makhlouf. On the back row, from left to right: Maher, Bashar, Basil, Majid, and Bushra al-Assad before 1984. Photo Credit: Unknown author, Wikimedia Commons
The Assad family. Hafez al-Assad and his wife, Mrs Anisa Makhlouf. On the back row, from left to right: Maher, Bashar, Basil, Majid, and Bushra al-Assad before 1984. Photo Credit: Unknown author, Wikimedia Commons

The Assads endeavored to present themselves as Muslims but few if any Syrian Sunnis accepted this claim. A rich body of evidence points to the rulers being near-universally perceived primarily not as Arabic-speakers, Baathists, pan-Syrianists, pan-Arab nationalists, or anti-Zionists but as Alawites. In 1973, demonstrators called for an end to “Alawite power.” The Muslim Brotherhood initiated a campaign of terror against what it called “the sectarian, dictatorial rule of the despot Hafez al-Assad” in 1976. In 1983, the National Alliance for the Liberation of Syria accused Assad of “a burning hostility to Arabs and Islam.”

Traditional roles and attitudes in effect reversed: Sunni hostility toward Alawite power echoed the historic Alawite hostility toward Sunni power. Drawing on both old and new grievances, the two groups came to loathe each other, creating a vicious circle. As Sunnis became increasingly alienated, Alawites depended ever more on Alawites to rule. As the regime took on an increasingly Alawite cast, Sunni discontent deepened.

(That said, it bears noting that academic analysts of Syria have almost universally rejected what the University of London’s Eberhard Kienle describes as a crude “popular caricature of a government purely by and for all Alawis,” and what the University of New Hampshire’s Alasdair Drysdale calls a “reductionist” focus on ethnicity.)

Civil War and Sunni Hostility, 2011–24

When the region-wide Islamist rebellion of 2011 reached Syria, it triggered a hideous 14-year—mainly Sunni—insurrection against Bashar al-Assad’s government. The civil war resulted in an estimated 7.5 million internally displaced persons, 5.2 million external refugees, and approximately 620,000 deaths. International involvement exacerbated the war’s sectarian nature, with the Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah helping the government, while Sunni Türkiye supported the rebels.

Domestically, the regime relied increasingly on its Alawite base to the point that Sunnis came to equate “Alawite” with “Assad-regime supporter.” Reuters recounts how Assad “sent army and secret police units dominated by [Alawite] officers … into mainly Sunni urban centers to crush demonstrations calling for his removal.” Meanwhile, Sunni conscripts “refused to fire at their co-religionists,” making the army unreliable for internal repression. The shabiha, a mostly Alawite plainclothes security force, took over many of its duties, engaging freely in vandalism, terror, and murder. In turn, the Jabhat al-Nusra organization—the predecessor of Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), today’s rulers—participated in massacring Alawite civilians.

Specific incidents steadily exacerbated Sunni-Alawite tensions. For example, according to Syrian refugees in Lebanon:

Before sunrise one August morning [of 2011], electricity in [an unnamed Syrian] village was cut and armed forces swooped in. … Among those taking part in the raid were people they said they recognized from a neighboring Alawite village who had joined pro-Assad militias known as the shabiha. … Seventy-five people were arrested in the village that day, according to the family. The bodies of two were returned to their families and, of the others, three have not been heard from since.

In another incident, in 2012 the shabiha focused on a single street in the town of Taldou, and, as the military looked on, mowed down 45 members of a single extended family. Some quotations capture the intensity of hostility this aroused among Sunnis:

  • Adnan al-Arour, a Sunni religious leader, referring to Alawites opposed to the Sunni uprising: “I swear by God we will mince them in grinders and feed their flesh to the dogs.”
  • Mamoun al-Homsi, a Syrian Sunni leader: “you despicable Alawites” … “From this day on, we will not remain silent. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. … I swear that if you do not renounce that gang and those killings, we will teach you a lesson that you will never forget. We will wipe you out from the land of Syria.”
  • Muhammad: “The people in this regime are forcing us to hate Alawites.”
  • Mustafa, a barber: “Assad developed and modernized the country for himself and the interests of his sect.”
  • Farid Ghadry, head of the Reform Party of Syria: Many Syrians “are seething with anger over the Alawite-led government’s butchering of Sunnis.”
  • Cherif Abaza, a former member of Parliament: “If you are a Christian or an Alawite, you will be slain.”
  • Ibtisam, an 11-year-old Sunni refugee living in Jordan: “I hate the Alawites and the Shiites. We are going to kill them with our knives, just like they killed us.”
  • Ahmed, 12-years old: “The Alawites say, ‘Kneel in front of my shoe.’ We can’t be free with Assad because he kills us.”
  • Heza, 13-years old: “After the revolution, we want to kill them.” Asked whether that included a child their own age, Heza replied, “I will kill him. It doesn’t matter.”

Civil War and Alawite Fear, 2011–24

In 2015, Syria’s future leader Ahmed al-Sharaa promised to protect Alawites but only if they agreed to “correct their doctrinal mistakes [i.e., abandon the Alawite religion] and embrace Islam.” At that point, he said, they would “become our brothers” and benefit from his protection. Such statements, not surprisingly, scared the small Alawite community. A 2011 report from Homs described a “harrowing sectarian war” spreading across the city, which had become divided into Alawite and Sunni residential areas:

Though some Alawites support the uprising, and some Sunnis still back the government, both communities have overwhelmingly gathered on opposite sides in the revolt. … the struggle in Homs has dragged the communities themselves into a battle that residents fear. … Alawites wear Christian crosses to avoid being abducted or killed when passing through the most restive Sunni neighborhoods.

Sunnis returning to reclaim their residences in Homs heightened Alawite fears. Wild rumors spread, such as that of an apocryphal female butcher in Homs who asked armed Sunni gangs “to bring her the bodies of Alawites they capture so that she can cut them up and market the meat.”

The New York Times reported that “Many Alawites are terrified; they are often the victims of the most vulgar stereotypes and, in popular conversation, uniformly associated with the leadership.” Ghadry wrote that Alawites fear “the Muslim Brotherhood sharpening their knives for the kill.” Dread simultaneously compelled the regime to make survival its top priority and the Alawite population to depend more heavily on the regime.

Worse, many Alawites also suffered under the Assad regime. Wafa Sultan, an exiled physician, recounts the many injustices, including intentional impoverishment (to ensure their sons would serve the government to earn a living), the persecution of intellectuals, and the imprisonment of dissidents’ relatives. Some, like one Alawite religious figure, reported that “the Alawite community is living in a state of great fear” and predicted that the regime’s collapse “will place us at the mercy of fierce reprisals.” Already in 2012, a teacher accurately predicted that the Assad regime, which “is using us … will run away, and we will pay a heavy price.” Despite that price, many Alawites rejoiced at Assad’s fall. In sum, Sunnis saw themselves as fighting an infidel tyranny, while Alawites saw themselves under existential threat.

Sunni Hostility, 2025–

Then came the stunning events of early December 2024, when the Sunni Islamists of Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham, under the leadership of Ahmed al-Sharaa, along with its allies, swept rapidly through Syria and within days seized Damascus. Assad fled to Russia.

The first three months of the new regime saw some Sunni retribution against Alawites but in a limited and unorganized way: firings from jobs, vigilantism, and small-scale violence. In late January, for example, Syrian journalist Ammar Dayoub documented incidents “from directing sectarian curses at Alawites and Shiites to gathering the men in the squares and flogging them, smashing furniture in people’s homes, stealing gold and silver and acts of violence against women.” Reuters reported a pattern of Alawites being ejected from their own homes, with a human rights group identifying “hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of evictions.”

In one instance, on January 24, government gunmen arrived in the largely Alawite town of Fahil in a convoy of SUVs and pickup trucks, some mounted with machine guns. They “went house-to-house … dragging Alawite men to their deaths,” in the Washington Post’s description, killing 16 Alawites associated with the prior regime, including one general. They also pulled passengers off a bus, asking them, “Are you Alawite?” and, in some cases, murdered those who answered in the affirmative.

In response, the regime “did not acknowledge these violations [but] blamed individuals or small local factions.” Further, MEMRI reports, “It also refrained from publishing the names of those responsible, thus preventing the families of the victims from taking legal action against them.” This predicament led to the formation of Alawite “resistance groups,” which the regime promptly vilified as “Assad loyalists.” 

Then, on March 6, 2025, large-scale assaults erupted, mostly in the Alawites’ home provinces of Latakia and Tartous—where, according to a 2017 study, Alawites make up 58 and 69 percent of the population, respectively—and in Damascus. Sunni forces, including the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and foreign jihadists, rampaged through Alawite areas, torching homes and killing indiscriminately.

The HTS government presented itself as defending the country against an insurgency of “Assad loyalists,” a spin the international media and even serious analysts widely accepted. But Alawites, who had suffered greatly under Assad family rule and especially during the civil war, abandoned Assad en masse in his hour of need when they could have saved him. Three months later, as Assad languished in Russia, Iranian support had collapsed, and Israeli forces had demolished all the old regime’s arsenals, Alawites did not fight a rearguard action for him. Rather, attacks by “resistance groups” against government forces stemmed from fears of persecution. (Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Bashar al-Assad and perhaps Syria’s richest person, implausibly but provocatively claimed to have recruited 150,000 fighters to protect the Alawite community in Latakia and Tartous.)

During the civil war period, Sunnis could freely express rage at Alawites. But in 2025, they came under pressure to be on their best behavior to help Sharaa convince foreign NGOs and governments to accept and aid his regime. However, digging beneath the surface makes clear that the March attacks were acts of vengeance for what one Sunni religious scholar, Abdallah Khalil al-Tamimi, described as the killing of two million Sunnis by “the Alawite regime … on sectarian grounds.” Gareth Brown of theEconomist witnessed firsthand a “call to jihad” in the mosques and elsewhere, prompting thousands of people to pick up their guns and rush to Alawite-majority areas. In Damascus, a radio host “encouraged his listeners to cast the Alawites into the sea.” Videotapes captured some of these sentiments, such as an HTS-affiliated commander shouting:

Oh warriors of jihad, do not leave any Alawite, male or female, alive. Slaughter the most respected men among them. Slaughter the most respected women among them. Slaughter them all, including children in their beds. They are pigs. Seize them and throw them into the sea.

When an HTS-affiliated imam, Yahya Abu al-Fath al-Farghali, promoted the idea of relocating jihadists and their families to Alawite-majority areas, he hinted at an ethnic cleansing.

Alawites Oppressed, 2025–

Proud of their actions, many Sunni perpetrators recorded videos of their actions, such as killing two sons in front of their mother. “This is revenge,” cried a man looting and burning Alawite homes. Sunnis humiliated Alawites, the Economist reports, forcing them “to bark like dogs, sitting on their backs, riding them, and then shooting them dead.” Others showed “dozens of bodies with bullets to the head … lined up in villages outside of Latakia” or “the bodies of Alawites being dragged behind cars through the streets.” Videos commonly feature triumphant yells of “Allahu Akbar,” the Islamic battle cry of jihad. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reports collecting “many testimonies” that “perpetrators raided houses, asking residents whether they were Alawite or Sunni before proceeding to either kill or spare them accordingly,” a pattern confirmed by Amnesty International. Such incidents amount to collective punishment against Alawites, regardless of whether they helped or opposed the Assad regime.

Alawites testified to their plight. A doctor told of entire families “being wiped out” as Sunnis “entered homes and carried out mass killings of all Alawites.” One person described Sunni jihadists “roaming house to house, killing occupants in summary executions and pillaging what they could find. Another explained that “They are killing us, targeting the Alawites. They cursed us, shot at us, burned our property. They are forcing people at gunpoint to sign over their money, homes, and cars. … They are dropping barrel bombs from planes onto our villages. They loot homes and burn us alive after carrying out mass executions by gunfire and slaughter.” Concerning the “barrel bombs from planes,” the New York Times reports that government forces deployed helicopters outfitted with both machine guns and repurposed Russian-made anti-submarine depth charges.

Another form of persecution, still shadowy, has emerged: the abduction of young Alawite women. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports 50 such disappearances in the first three and a half months of 2025. While the disappearances recall the abduction of Yazidi women in Iraq, they does not appear to have reached the same levels in terms of numbers or sexual abuse, though incidents of torture have been reported.

An in-depth New York Times investigation into events in Baniyas uncovered a massacre of some 1,600 victims, mostly Alawites. “Over three days, gunmen went house to house, summarily executing civilians and opening fire in the streets. … At least some government soldiers deployed to restore order also participated in the killings.” After the killing spree, “Bodies were everywhere. Sprawled across living room floors. Hunched over in citrus orchards. Lying bloodied on roads.” To prevent Alawites from escaping Baniyas, the gunmen established checkpoints. In response, some Alawite women wore hijabs to pass as Sunnis when confronted with the inevitable question, usually asked threateningly and repeatedly, “Sunni or Alawite?”

Fear extended even to corpses. As one Alawite near Homs testified, “Near our house, there are 15 bodies, and nobody has the courage to remove them since yesterday.” Amnesty International reports that “Families of victims were forced by the authorities to bury their loved one in mass burial sites without religious rites or a public ceremony.”

While the violence subsided after early March, incidents of harassment, shakedowns, and attacks continued, with SOHR counting approximately three killings per day. Polling by the Economist finds Alawites about seven times more pessimistic than Sunnis regarding Syria’s future, an outlook prompting many to emigrate. In mid-April, the United Nations counted 30,000 Alawites fleeing to Lebanon. Interviews with them indicate despair about developments in Syria and no intention of returning. Russia’s Foreign Ministry confirms that more than 8,000 Syrians, mostly women and children, took refuge at its Hmeimim Air Base in Syria. A 36-year-old from Latakia, hiding in an abandoned building summed up the predicament: “As an Alawite, I don’t see a future here in Syria.”

In the face of this carnage, Sharaa serenely responded: “What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges.” … “We must preserve national unity and civil peace.” … “We call on Syrians to be reassured because the country has the fundamentals for survival.” He also set up a commission of inquiry. Meanwhile, Al-Monitor reports that HTS’ ally in Ankara blamed “clashes as an attempt by Iran and Israel to weaken Sharaa’s government” and promised to ramp up its support for him.

Western acceptance brings many financial and other benefits. That HTS leaders had emerged from Al-Qaeda and ISIS lends an air of theater to their donning blazers or suits and ties, then embracing happy talk about human rights and blaming violence on the Alawites. In fact, the massacres of early March cast additional doubt on HTS’ sincerity. As Dina Lisnyansky of Tel Aviv University notes, “It’s very clear that if the central regime did not want these things, they would not happen, because these are not just local Islamist initiatives. Those taking part in the killings have fought for years under al-Sharaa’s command. They’re not suddenly rebelling against al-Sharaa. They’re simply continuing the ideology.” Her colleague Michael Milshstein goes further: “You saw his men in action during the massacre.”

Foreign Responses

During the quarter-century from independence until Hafez al-Assad’s seizure of power (1946-70), Syria served as a battleground for its stronger neighbors, a predicament captured by the title of a famed 1965 book, The Struggle for Syria. After four decades of despotic stability (1970-2010), the civil war of 2011-24 revived the struggle for Syria, this time hosting multiple domestic armed factions, several regional forces (Turkish, Iranian, Israeli), and two great powers (Russia, the United States).

But this renewed struggle for Syria differs in one major respect from the earlier one: the then almost-routine oppression of Alawites has turned into something far more harrowing. One Alawite source estimates the victims to number in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. Indeed, some analysts already refer to the situation as a genocide. The Kurdish Syrian writer Mousa Basrawi decried “an organized campaign of genocide … aimed at exterminating the Alawites.” Christian Solidarity International issued a “genocide warning” due to the “orgy of targeted killings accompanied by dehumanizing hate speech.”

The international response to this peril? Virtual silence. Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel astringently notes the absence of “marches in the streets of London or New York. No one will fight for the murdered Alawites. No one will demonstrate in the streets of Paris to protect families being slaughtered, and no one will set up a camp at Columbia University.”

And Western governments? Washington “condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days.” Canberra “condemns the recent horrific violence in Syria’s coastal region” and is “deeply concerned by UN reports that many civilians from the Alawite community were summarily executed.” The United Nations denounces “harrowing violations and abuses.”

Contradicting these fine words, the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Sharaa resulted in the lifting of American sanctions on Syria without any apparent conditions or demands regarding the security of Alawite or other minorities. Except for Israel, it appears that outside powers have entirely abandoned them.

U.S. inaction during the 1994 Rwandan genocide led to subsequent apologies (Bill Clinton: “I express regret for my personal failure”), as did Dutch failures a year later in Bosnia (Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren: “We offer our deepest apologies”). The present danger to Syria’s Alawites is clear: will politicians once again be content merely to apologize after the fact?

  • About the author: Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is the founder of the Middle East Forum. This article draws on his three books about Syria as well as a 1987 analysis titled “Syria After Assad.” © 2025 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
  • Source: This article was published by Middle East Quarterly Summer 2025 Volume 32: Number 3
Middle East Quarterly

Middle East Quarterly, published since 1994 and edited by Efraim Karsh, it is the only scholarly journal on the Middle East consistent with mainstream American views. Delivering timely analyses, cutting-edge information, and sound policy initiatives, it serves as a valuable resource for policymakers and opinion-shapers.
Powering the future

Pakistan’s newfound enthusiasm for crypto doesn’t have to follow the chaotic arc seen elsewhere.

June 2, 2025 
DAWN

The writer is the founder of Media Matters for Democracy.

“FOR every prompt on ChatGPT, the cost is a bottle of water spilled”, read a post I recently came across on my timeline; an attempt to moralise the environmental cost of every AI prompt.

The implication was clear: that interacting with generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), is somehow an extravagant and irresponsible use of electricity. It is the kind of sanctimonious alarmism that sounds intelligent until you hold it up to basic scrutiny.

Because if we’re going to start measuring digital behaviour by the drop, let’s at least be consistent. How many litres are poured into the void eve­ry time someone binge-watches an entire season on Netflix in HD?

How many hours are spent mi­­ndlessly refreshing timelines, watching algorithmically served rage bait, or uploading the fifth fil­­tered version of a sunset or a workout video for some Instagram validation? These, too, are digital actions. They, too, have a carbon cost. But somehow, they escape critique, not because they’re cleaner but because they’re culturally familiar. We’ve normalised that waste, so we don’t see it.

It’s not that AI and crypto shouldn’t be held to environmental standards; they absolutely should. But let’s not pretend that the sudden concern about electricity and water consumption is rooted in climate justice. It’s not. It’s rooted in a deep discomfort with change, with disruption, and with technologies that threaten to redistribute power away from legacy structures, and towards something less familiar, less controllable, and potentially more liberating. This is much less about the energy, or the climate, and much more about inertia masquerading as morality.

At the cost of repetition, the point is not to excuse AI’s energy demands but to highlight the absurdity of pretending that prompting GPT is where the guilt should begin. These criticisms aren’t rooted in environmental justice but the fear of technological disruption, especially of tools that could shift knowledge creation, creative production, and economic opportunity outside the gates of elite institutions.

Pakistan’s newfound enthusiasm for crypto doesn’t have to follow the chaotic arc seen elsewhere.

I’ve been noticing similar fear-mongering around Pakistan’s recent interest in crypto and AI, especially the chorus of concern over energy consumption. The government’s announcement to dedicate two gigawatts of power towards AI data centres and crypto mining has triggered a kind of moral panic that feels less about climate and more about control.

Overnight, everyone’s turned into an energy auditor, as if this country hasn’t spent decades watching power get siphoned off by inefficient state-owned enterprises, bloated real estate empires, and unmetered political favour. Now, when the state finally signals an intention to invest in frontier tech, industries that might bring Pakistan into the modern digital economy, it’s met with outrage dressed up as environmentalism.

Let’s be honest: this isn’t about the electricity. It’s about the shift. About newer, faster players entering spaces traditionally guarded by bureaucracy and old power structures. It’s about the fear of Pakistan participating in a world its critics no longer fully understand.

If we’re serious about addressing the environmental cost of emerging technologies like AI and crypto, the answer is to steer it responsibly, and not outrightly shut it down. That means demanding transparency from data centres on their ener­­gy and water use, pushing for cleaner energy integration, and incentivising green infrastructure, not stoking public fear to stall progress.

An inclusive approach understands that Pakistan, already trailing in tech, can’t afford to sit out the AI revolution. At the same time, it also can’t replicate the dirty models of the past. The task is to build a roadmap where innovation and sustainability are­­n’t seen as opposing forces but as twin imperatives.

But that roadmap can’t be built in isolation. Voluntary commitments by tech companies to switch to clean energy have, time and again, proven inadequate. What’s needed now is serious advocacy that targets global forums, from the United Nations to international standard-setting bodies, to push for binding protocols that compel technology firms to meet stringent environmental obligations. The burden of sustainability cannot rest on consumer guilt or national regulation alone; it must be enforced at the level where tech power actually resides.

As for Pakistan’s new love for crypto, there are far more pressing questions to be asked than the performative panic over electricity consumption. Who is shaping the regulatory framework? Who stands to benefit, and who might be excluded? Is this going to be another playground for politically connected actors to mine profit under the guise of innovation, or can it become a legitimate avenue for financial inclusion in a country where access to traditional banking remains out of reach for millions?

The energy question is real, but it can’t be the only lens. We need to talk about transparency, governance, digital rights and whether this tech will empower or further marginalise. The conversation must move past the performative activism and dig into the architecture being quietly built. If we don’t shape it now, we’ll find ourselves locked out of systems that claim to be open.

Pakistan’s newfound enthusiasm for crypto doesn’t have to follow the chaotic, exploitative arc seen elsewhere. This moment presents a chance to do it differently, to design systems that are transparent, inclusive, and locally rooted. Crypto can be more than just speculative trading and mining farms; it can be a way to reimagine financial access, to build tools for remittances, savings, and digital ownership for people excluded from formal banking. But that requires intent.

We need a regulatory framework built in consultation with technologists, civil society, and financial experts, and not just the enforcement bodies. We need clarity, not criminalisation; guardrails, not gatekeeping.

If Pakistan wants to embrace crypto, it must also invest in public literacy, consumer protections, and infrastructure that ensures the benefits are not just concentrated at the top. This doesn’t have to be a rushed gold rush. It can be a careful, deliberate step towards something fairer, but only if we’re brave enough to move past the performative actions.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2025
PAKISTAN

Muzzling criticism
June 2, 2025 
DAWN


HRCP’s recent call for the repeal of the Peca (Amendment) Act of 2025 should serve as a stark warning for a government increasingly reliant on coercive legislation to stifle legitimate dissent.

As the HRCP report rightly underscores, Peca has morphed into a blunt instrument used to silence critics, muzzle the press and weaken fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

From political workers to TikTokers, and even a police officer critical of the presidency, the law’s application has grown alarmingly broad and punitive. What was initially framed as a measure against cybercrime now operates more as a tool of political retribution.

The criminalisation of vaguely defined terms such as ‘false information’ and the unchecked power vested in regulatory bodies dominated by the executive mark a steady and dangerous shift towards authoritarianism — a shift that is playing out before the world even as the government pretends otherwise.

The report paints a dire picture: offences that were once bailable and non-cognizable are now treated as serious crimes. The newly created National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency lacks transparency and safeguards; and the economic intimidation of journalists, such as freezing bank accounts, is the new normal.

Nowhere is this crackdown felt more acutely than in regions already under pressure, such as Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir, where connectivity is hyper-regulated and journalistic work is fraught with risk.

The state’s argument for curbing disinformation cannot be used to justify the silencing of legitimate criticism. Democracies thrive on and are underpinned by accountability, and the strength of the latter depends on the freedom to speak truth to power. Peca, in its current form, does not protect the public; instead, it protects those in power from the scrutiny of the public.

What is particularly significant in the HRCP report is the call to establish a national coalition of civil society, journalists and political stakeholders. This is not merely a procedural suggestion but a democratic necessity.

The government should seize this opportunity to open dialogue and reform repressive laws before it slides further into autocracy. Ignoring this call would be a grave misstep. The repeal of Peca is not just a legal correction, but a moral and democratic obligation. Pakistan must choose whether it wants to be seen as a nation that safeguards speech or one that penalises it.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2025
Karachi residents feel more low-intensity tremors
Published June 2, 2025 

This illustration shows the two areas where tremors were felt by Karachi residents on June 1 and June 2. — via Google Map

Another low-intensity earthquake was felt by Karachi residents on Monday, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD).

The tremor was the third within 24 hours.

The most recent quake measured 3.2 on the Richter scale with the city’s densely populated Quaidabad area as its epicentre. The area’s residents had also experienced a similar 3.6-magnitude tremor at 5:33pm yesterday.

Both earthquakes originated at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres beneath the surface.

A separate tremor originating near the city’s Gadap Town was recorded at 1:05am earlier today. It measured 3.2 on the Richter scale and had a depth of 12km.

Experts have previously pointed out that such minor seismic activities “preempt” high-intensity earthquakes by constantly releasing accumulated energy within the tectonic plates.

The country had witnessed around 20 low-intensity earthquakes in the first half of February — an average of more than one tremor each day.

In April, jolts were felt in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab — including Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore — twice that month.

Pakistan falls on three major tectonic plates — the Arabian, Euro-Asian and Indian — according to geological engineer Muhammad Rehan, creating five seismic zones within the country.
Human Rights Watch warns Gulf labourers at risk as temperatures soar

AFP Published June 2, 2025

BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch said on Sunday that migrant workers in the Gulf were at risk from extreme heat, urging countries to extend protections for labourers exposed to soaring temperatures.

The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, where migrants represent a sizable share of the workforce, lie in one of the planet’s hottest regions where summer temperatures often edge towards 50 degrees Celsius.


“Every summer reveals that the climate crisis aggravates the occupational health and safety catastrophe for the millions of migrant workers dangerously exposed to extreme heat,” said Michael Page, HRW’s deputy Middle East director.

“Because Gulf states are dragging their feet on evidence-based labour protections, migrant workers are unnecessarily dying, experiencing kidney failure, and suffering from other chronic illnesses,” he added.

The wealthy Gulf states rely heavily on millions of migrant workers, particularly in construction, the majority of whom hail from India and Pakistan. Last month, the UAE breached its May temperature record for the second day in a row, hitting 51.6 degrees Celsius.

To protect labourers, the states ban work under direct sunlight and in open-air areas at peak heat hours from mid-June until mid-September as part of a longstanding “midday break” policy.

But with the Gulf particularly vulnerable to climate change, HRW said “these extreme heat conditions are now more frequent and earlier, in May”, before the midday break comes into effect.

A electrician in Kuwait interviewed by the New York-based rights group said he would feel “dizziness, vomiting, head pain, and blurry vision many times,” working during the summer months and “many people fall down because of heat”.

HRW urged authorities and businesses to move away from “calendar-based midday bans,” to risk-based measures to gauge occupational heat stress.

Scientists have shown that recurring heatwaves are a clear marker of global warming and that these heatwaves are set to become more frequent, longer and more intense.

The number of extremely hot days has nearly doubled globally in the past three decades.

According to a 2024 report from the International Labour Organisation, a United Nations agency, outdoor workers in Arab states face some of the highest exposure to heat stress in the world, with 83.6 percent suffering from excessive heat exposure on the job.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2025
IS-K in Balochistan
 June 1, 2025 
DAWN

The writer is a security analyst.


THE security landscape in Balochistan has grown increasingly complex, with a surge in terrorist attacks carried out by Baloch insurgents and the silent but calculated entry of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (IS-K) into the conflict.

In an unexpected move, IS-K has declared war not only on the Pakistani state but also on the insurgents themselves, denouncing their nationalist agendas as unIslamic.

Recently, IS-K released a booklet denouncing ethno-linguistic nationalist movements in Pakistan, explicitly targeting the Baloch and Pakhtun nationalist movements. The group singled out the BYC and its leader Mahrang Baloch, as well as the PTM and its leader, Manzoor Pashteen.

The release of this threatening booklet was alarming in itself. However, the following day, IS-K escalated matters by issuing an audio statement formally declaring war on Baloch insurgents, justifying the move by accusing the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) of killing its fighters in the Mastung district of Balochistan.

Although IS-K has had a presence in Baloch­istan since the early days of its parent group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and was one of the first global affiliates to pledge allegiance to its leadership, it had never directly confronted natio­nalist forces, until now. What does IS-K’s entry into this already volatile theatre mean? And can it reshape the dynamics of conflict in Balochistan?

Can the militant group’s entry reshape the dynamics of conflict in the province?

IS-K has been involved in 33 terrorist attacks in Balochistan since 2016, resulting in the deaths of 436 people and injuries to 691 others. Shrines and churches have remained among its primary targets. IS-K has attacked shrines and churches eight times, while among human targets, political figures, especially politicians affiliated with the JUI, are at the top of its hit list. Security forces and polio health workers follow close behind.

Many senior JUI leaders have been targeted by IS-K in Balochistan, including Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, Hafiz Hamdullah and Maulana Abdul Wasay. While it also targeted a PTI candidate in Sibi, one of the most dangerous attacks was an assassination attempt on former president Arif Alvi, who survived. The group has not spared nationalist leaders and pro-state politicians either. Notably, Siraj Raisani of the Balochistan Awami Party was killed during the 2018 election campaign. Another significant incident was the kidnapping of Chinese nationals, who were held in Mastung.

Interestingly, IS-K operations in Balochistan, like in KP, are limited to specific territories. In KP, its activities are mostly confined to the Baja­­ur tribal district and Peshawar, where it has carried out 36 and 19 attacks, respectively. IS-K stri­ctly follows the Salafi interpretation of Islam, which is also prevalent in Bajaur and neighbouring regions in Afghanistan, such as Kunar and Nu­­ristan. These Afghan regions, where IS-K main­­­­tains a strong presence, share borders with Pakistan.

However, the operational context in Balochistan is different. IS-K’s activities are concentrated in the central western part of the province, from the outskirts of Quetta to Mastung, Kalat, and parts of Khuzdar. From Mastung, its presence extends into Bolan and reaches Sibi district, which borders Sindh. At one point, Sindh’s Counter-Terrorism Department reported that IS-K had established training camps in Balochistan near the provincial border and was exporting terrorism into Sindh, particularly by radicalising Sindhi youth, especially those from Brahui tribes. These reports surfaced after the February 2017 investigation of the IS-K terrorist attack on the famous shrine of Sehwan Sharif.

Mastung and the outskirts of Quetta serve as IS-K’s major hubs, where it has carried out 12 and 10 attacks, respectively. It also maintains a presence in Kalat, Bolan and Khuzdar, which are nearby. These areas are predominantly inhabited by Baloch communities, many of whom are affiliated with religious organisations. The JUI enjoys strong political support here, and some experts trace this religious inclination to the Qalat state’s pre-merger policy of patronising Deobandi madressahs. Regardless of the reasons, Balochistan has witnessed increasing competition among different Islamic movements, including the TLP and Shia organisations.

Shia madressahs have expanded their presence in the region over the past 15 years. Attacks on Shia pilgrims, particularly by groups like Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, which later merged into IS-K, have occurred along the routes passing through Mastung and Nushki districts. Convoys here have often been targeted in the past.

The TLP has also established a foothold in this region, primarily through Karachi, extending its influence along the Quetta-Karachi highway. Certain Baloch residents from this area who live in Karachi have played a key role in spreading this influence. Nonetheless, JUI remains a dominant political force in the region and continues to hold significant electoral power.

One understands why the IS-K targets JUI both in KP and Balochistan — the group considers it to be a close ally of the Taliban in Pakistan. In Afghanistan, the armed confrontation between IS-K and the Afghan Taliban has been going on even before the latter’s takeover of that country; the significant difference between the two lies in their views on state structure and the concept of a caliphate.

The IS-K believes that the Taliban is a nationalist movement and an ally of the West, and there is no difference between the power elites of Pakistan, other Muslim states, and the Taliban. To IS-K, nationalism is an unIslamic concept, and now it has expanded its circle to nationalist movements in the country, both violent and peaceful.

This development will heighten the threat level for nationalist and rights movements in Balochistan and KP, while also triggering potential clashes between Islamist militants and nationalist insurgents.

Until now, both sides had avoided confrontation, despite operating in overlapping territories; however, that dynamic is likely to change. Although the BLA has expanded its operational footprint across much of the province, IS-K remains confined mainly to Mastung and its surrounding areas. Still, its presence could become a significant distraction for the BLA.

It remains uncertain whether this confrontation is necessarily good news for the state’s security institutions. While some may view it as a conflict that could weaken two adversaries simultaneously, the reality may be more complicated. IS-K is unlikely to abandon its operational strategy; instead, it may adapt and evolve, further complicating the already volatile security environment in Balochistan.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2025
Rise of ‘neo-globalists’

Published June 2, 2025 

WAY back in the late 2010s, I remember Democratic political pundit Donna Brazile describing then-US president Donald Trump as a “tree shaker.” That was during his first term when traditional guardrails on presidential power were still in place. In his second term, those guardrails have disappeared, and he has become a forest fire, wreaking havoc in all directions.

But four months in the era of Trump chaos is a long time and the tenor of criticism has begun to change. At first, criticism focused on the negative effects of each action, which added to the long list of things to be resisted. Recently, however, criticism has begun to focus on weaknesses in Trump’s isolationist “America First” argument that drives his decision-making. Instead of adding to the list of outrages, emerging criticism attempts to create an appealing counterargument in the hope of weakening Trump’s appeal. Two arguments that have deep roots in 20th century politics have gained strength.

The first is progressive-left change, advocated by Bernie Sanders since the 2016 presidential campaign. Sanders is now in his 80s, and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has moved into a position to lead the movement. “Election Betting Odds,” an aggregate of political betting websites, has her tied for first place in the race for the 2028 Democratic nomination and running second behind JD Vance for the presidency. Born in 1989, she will turn 39 just before the 2028 election. Democrats are still smarting from Kamala Harris’s loss in 2024 and finding their way will take time, but Ocasio-Cortez is creating the biggest buzz among possible candidates. If she were to run, she would instantly be one of the most competitive candidates.

The idea of an Ocasio-Cortez nomination makes members of the Democratic Party establishment nervous, just as the idea of a Sanders nomination did. Their worries stem from a combination of worries that progressive-left candidates cannot win and fear that they will lose influence over the party. Their worries are valid. Various analyses of US voters give the progressive left a core support level of about 15 percent, which is hardly enough to win the Democratic nomination, let alone the general election. To win, a progressive-left candidate either needs to move to the center or draw on activist energy in the hope of creating momentum. In 2016 and 2020, Bernie Sanders followed the latter strategy, but it was not enough to win. This suggests that an Ocasio-Cortez candidacy could be risky.

‘Neo-globalism’ rejects Trump’s tariffs, restrictions on immigration and isolationist worldview

The second argument is “neo-globalism,” which rejects Trump’s tariffs, restrictions on immigration and isolationist worldview. Neo-globalists acknowledge weaknesses in 20th century globalism and the neoliberal policies that underpinned it. They respect national interests but are firmly committed to free trade, openness to immigration, international institutions and democratic ideals.

The ascendance of critiques of globalisation in the 2010s, first from the progressive left and later from right-wing populist movements, put globalists on the defensive. By the 2020s, support for globalisation had become passe, and pundits argued that Donald Trump’s victory in 2024 marked the end of the era of globalisation.

During the past four months, Trump’s attacks on the structures of globalisation have stirred a pro-globalisation backlash. Emboldened globalists are now arguing that, despite its flaws, globalisation offers hope to more people around the world than isolationism and reactionary populism. The public in many countries is responding to these arguments by rejecting the tenets of reactionary populism. In the US, nearly two-thirds of voters disapprove of Trump’s tariffs, while negative opinions of the US have soared around the world because of Trump.

Recent elections in Australia and Canada suggest that “neo-globalists” who create broad coalitions can defeat the populist right. In Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of the center-left Labor Party won one of the largest majorities in history by tying his conservative opponent to the populist right. In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney of the centrist Liberal Party won the most seats in parliament by drawing on resistance to Trump while pulling votes away from the progressive-left New Democratic Party. In French legislative elections in 2024, cooperation between the centrist and progressive-left parties helped beat back a strong challenge from the far-right populist parties.

The midterm elections in the US in 2026 will be an important test of whether neo-globalists and the progressive left can build a coalition to win control of Congress. Now is the time for the Democratic Party to focus on building and sustaining such a coalition rather than worrying about the nominee for 2028.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2025